Watch Me Bleed
by TechnicolorNina
Summary: The marks on Rex' arm make him remember. Rex/Martha AU, written for the 5Ds 100 on LiveJournal.


**Title:** Watch Me Bleed  
**Character/Pairing/Group:** Rex/Martha, mentions of Rudger  
**Prompt:** #51 - Scar  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Genre:** Angst  
**Pairing:** Rex/Martha  
**Summary:** Rex remembers. The marks on the arm that is not actually his aid that memory.  
**Notes:** Current NaNo count: 9011. Yes, I'm behind. I WILL CATCH UP.

* * *

_You there, down on your knees  
Begging me "Please, come watch me bleed"_

- "Only Women Bleed," Alice Cooper

* * *

It's eerie, he thinks, how much the left hand looks like the right.

The skin is darker on the left hand-although even that is fading, melanin and proteins slowly being absorbed, redistributed-and the ring and small fingers are both slightly crooked, the result of a slam in a heavy metal door years before. The fingernails are shaped differently, and the fingers themselves are a little longer.

Rudger was a bigger man than he, after all.

But perhaps the most telling thing about this hand, the thing that haunts him, nags him, is the thin white line that shows where in a mad bid to become master of all he attached his brother's arm to the truncated stump of his own. Rudger's body is gone; he made a sacrifice of himself to send his brother back in spite of every protest Rex all but screamed at him. _Your work is not done,_ he said, and then Rex was lying on the ground, stunned and grieving all over again but alive, with two living arms to push himself into a sitting position, two sets of five fingers to feel the rubble beneath him.

He resigned his position, left the city. That was six months ago.

Martha has been forgiving enough to take him in, caring for him first through night terrors and something very nearly approaching a nervous breakdown, and now, in the calmer aftermath of those things, when he is able to bring nothing of value to her except a few basic building repairs and a labourer's paycheque. And in the back of his mind the winds of that dark time still blow, like a heavy riptide beneath the surface of a mostly serene lake. He cannot wait for the day when that thin white line fades to match, or at least be hidden by, his natural skin tone, so he doesn't have to look at it anymore. He grieves daily for his brother-neither a criminal nor a homicidal maniac, but simply a man driven insane by an uncaring destiny that ripped him apart-and the relentless reminder that he has taken the last thing his brother had to offer is enough to wake him in the night with cold sweat beaded on his back and forehead.

It isn't enough that he has nightmares, not enough that he cannot wear short sleeves without seeing that thin white line, not enough that he can run his fingers over the place where the bright red stain of the Crimson Dragon's head has left the skin rougher than the flesh surrounding its former home. The reminders, physical and mental, return again and again to come to him when he least expects them, just as the first time he was whole enough to see and recognise the line on his arm was the first time since his ill-fated departure from Satellite that Martha called him to her bed, and the sudden sight of it in the dim light of the lamp on her nightstand was very nearly enough to make him scream.

He is kneeling in the kitchen garden Martha has put in behind the back of the house, pulling weeds (and occasionally picking a few early peas, which she will probably be glad to throw into whatever soup or casserole she is planning for supper), when he feels a hand on his shoulder, cool against his skin-pulling weeds can be a sweaty business, especially in June-and after he tenses, certain for just a second that he is about to serve retribution for his crimes, he lets out a sigh and sits back, pushing hair out of his face with a dirt-streaked hand. Martha kneels next to him, moving slowly-sixty does not have the mobility of forty-three, after all-and holds out a beer. He takes a long drink of it-there is nothing, and never will be anything, quite like a cold beer on a hot day when there is yardwork to be done-and then sets it down. She sits with him in silence, waiting to see if he will speak. She has taken to acting this way all the time, he's noticed, respecting his new grief over an old death, still the remarkable and amazing woman he married thirty-eight years ago. Her capacity for not just acceptance but forgiveness has not yet ceased to shock him to his very core, and he wonders now if it ever will.

At last she reaches out with her right hand, threads her fingers through the ones on his stolen left hand, squeezes. He looks between their hands and her face, asking her a silent question he isn't sure he wants an answer to. Finally her hand slides away from his and she reaches for the pile of weeds he's pulled.

"Save the dandelions," she says, and then, "I let them grow here on purpose, you know."

He nods. He is well aware of what she means. Toasted and ground dandelion roots for a brewed cold remedy, dandelion leaves and stems for salad . . . and if there is a use for the heads, he thinks, Martha will know it. She is a resourceful woman, and was a resourceful girl long before he came into her life. He scatters the pile and starts looking for the plants he's cast off, not at all surprised when she begins gathering them into her apron. Their leaves will almost doubtless be in the salad she will probably serve tonight. This is the kind of thing that allows him to stay here without feeling himself even more of a burden-putting a fresh coat of paint on the house, picking dinner fresh from the plant, refitting the storm shutters to come flush when they are closed.

The knowledge that he was once a great deal more than he is now is like the marks on his arm, and he accepts it as he accepts them-as penance for the crimes he has committed, not just against the people of both city and Satellite, but against whatever gods there may be. Once he was a scientist. Now he is a day labourer, fitting stays and pouring concrete, and the most he can say for his new job is that it at least lets him see through to the end the dream that propelled him off the end of what, in the end, was little more than a glorified ramp.

Martha could say other things about the place he has come to in society; she is a strong believer in the healing power of busy hands, and she sleeps alongside him often enough to take note of the way his nightmares have abated, little by little. She knows he has suffered-if the look in his eyes the day they stood face to face in her backyard wasn't enough to tell her, the first night she spent by his bedside, watching him twitch and moan in his sleep, would easily have filled in the blanks. She would no more fault him for leaving behind an almost certain position at KaibaCorp and coming back to Satellite as a humble labourer than he would fault her for having brown eyes. But he is not a clairvoyant, and so he does not know the other things she could say.

She takes his pile of dandelions and tips her apronful into the wicker basket next to her, and then, while she is still on her knees, kisses his temple. He accepts it, now, instead of pulling away as he did the first time she kissed his face after he came back, trying to tell her she didn't owe him anything in the way of marriage privileges; accepts but does not believe, deep down, that he deserves it. She smoothes his hair back and reaches for his beer bottle to take a sip for herself, the way they used to share a single glass of wine or champagne before the city was split in two, then touches his wrist-the left one, the one that was metal not so very long ago, the one belonging to an arm that should be a paralyzed stump. He looks down at her, and she smiles. The smile is sad . . . but it is there.

"How long are you going to keep looking at it as a theft?" she asks him, and he very nearly jumps. He has been surprised again and again by how easily her train of thought follows his even after sixteen years apart, but this is beyond surprise and into the realm of completely uncanny. Still, he doesn't bother asking her how she knew what he was thinking-he knows she will just smile that smile that says there is nothing to say. Instead he answers her question with another question that is not the question at the front of his mind, the how-did-you-know that he supposes will eventually fade.

"What other way to look at it is there?" is what he asks, and she shakes her head at him, reaching for her wicker basket.

"Maybe as a gift," she suggests, and gets to her feet.

He watches her go, right hand resting unconsciously over the white line, the place where where dark meets light. 


End file.
